Examples of Eisegesis With the Cult of Mary

I found this in my files.  It is explaining to a friend an email conversation I had with a priest in 2010.  You can see how bizarre some of the Roman Catholic teachings can be.  I will show the priest’s comments in blue, followed by my comments to my friend (original was not color-coded).

The “until” of Matthew 1:25 - that Joseph “knew her not until [Greek eos]…" - is similar to Jesus' promise to remain with us “until [Greek eos] the completion of the age” (Matthew 28:20, Darby Translation).  This doesn't imply He will abandon us afterwards...

In other words, Jesus didn't abandon us so Mary didn't abandon her virginity.  (?????)

What you seem to imply is that Mary plays the harlot by having children by another lover (Joseph in this case) after having Jesus by the Holy Spirit, since: If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her? ...  You have played the harlot with many lovers; and would you return to me? says the LORD.  Jeremiah 3:1

This is the first time I have heard this argument for Mary's perpetual virginity.  This is the official R.C. position!  Talk about twisting Scripture!  And even twisting logic without Scripture!

Mary's reply to Gabriel implies she and Joseph were committed to virginity: “How can this be [How can I become the Messiah's mother], since I do not know man” (the literal translation of Luke 1:34, comment added)?  If Mary committed herself to virginity, then to accuse her otherwise would be offensive, would it not?

How in the world does the R.C.C. take this to "imply" a commitment to virginity?  All it says is that she hadn't had sex - YET! It takes some real illogic and twisting to find this "implication."

How we treat Mary affects our relationship with Jesus.  If He intended the words, “Behold, your mother” John 19:27), for all Christians - all disciples whom He loves (John 19:26) - then to reject Mary as our mother is to disobey and thus reject Christ.

More twisting of Scripture, so obvious that anyone with half a brain should be able to see it.  Nowhere does Scripture tell us that the conversation was directed to anyone other than John, “the disciple whom He loved."  They have to make John 19:26 mean every Christian instead of John, which doesn't make any sense.  But this is how R.C. make Mary our "mother."

Some more convoluted teaching, unbiblical assertions, and horrid eisegesis to force Scripture to support RCC doctrine:

John's love moved him to identify the ark of the New Covenant with a woman, the mother of the Redeemer (Revelation 11:19-12:6). It is God Himself who, through his angel as intermediary, greets Mary…."Full of grace, the Lord is with thee…." Mary is full of grace because the Lord is with her.  The grace with which she is filled is the presence of him who is the source of all grace.  “Rejoice...O Daughter of Jerusalem...the Lord your God is in your  midst”  (Zephaniah 3:14, 17a).  Mary...the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells.  She is “the dwelling of God...with men” (Revelation 21:3).  Full of grace, Mary is wholly given over to him who has come to dwell in her and whom she is about to give to the world.  [CCC 2676]

To really get to know Mary, we must love her as Christ did. This helps us to discover Mary in other scriptural passages [OH, DO WE HAVE TO DISCOVER HER IN THESE PASSAGES?].  Many Church fathers noticeably loved Mary as their mother and identified figures of her in the Old Testament.  For example, as Jesus is the new Adam, they saw Mary as the new Eve. ...

As Eve was an immaculate virgin before the fall [my question to him-If she was a virgin the whole time in the garden prior to the fall, wasn't she disobeying God's command to be fruitful and multiply if she wasn't trying to do so?  And didn't God intend for them to become “one"?], so Mary was conceived immaculate and remained a virgin.

The parallel between Genesis 2:23-3:24 and Revelation 11:19-12:17 confirms Mary as the new Eve: Adam calls Eve woman; Christ call Mary woman (also, John 2:4,19:26); God clothed Eve with skins; Mary with the sun; woman with birth-pangs (also, Micah 5:3); the serpent battles the woman and her seed; serpent is cursed; God promises to put enmity between the serpent and the woman; God fulfills that promise; mother of the living; mother of the true living, those who keep God's commandments; Eve and her seed put out of garden; woman and child flee into desert; Eve accompanies Adam at the tree of knowledge; Mary accompanies Jesus hanging on the tree (John 19:25; 1 Peter 2:24); an angel vanquishes man from the tree of life; Satan from heaven.

Mary is also the ark of the New Covenant.  Jesus taught us to think this way, explaining that His body was God's true temple (John 2:19-21).  The ark contained three things: “the manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant” (Hebrews 9:4).  Mary's womb carried the real manna, Christ's body, the true bread from heaven (John 6:48-51); the true high priest, to whom Aaron's rod pointed (Numbers 17:1-13); and the incarnate Word - not just the Decalogue, God's ten words.  …

When John saw the ark of the New Covenant in the heavenly temple (Revelation 11:19)...a great sign appears, a virgin with child (Isaiah 7:14), the mother of the Redeemer (Revelation 12:1,5), the new Eve!  Moses covered the Old Testament ark with gold (Exodus 25:10-22); Mary's title - Kecharitomene, "full of grace" (Luke 1:28, Douay-Rheims) - indicates that God fully overshadowed her with pure, sinless favor or grace (charis).  Scripture requires her Immaculate Conception!…

Every child should be conceived in an act of pure love.  To be the product of passion, lust, rape, or incest is a grave injustice to an innocent child [since when is conception from passion a sin?].  Were Mary to have relations with Joseph (which she had a right to before conceiving Jesus) it would mean her love for God, in which she conceived Jesus, wasn't virginal-spousal.  But Jesus had to be conceived in an act of virginal-spousal love; thus Mary had to remain a virgin.

We must take Scripture at its word. Mary is called a virgin before conceiving our Lord (Luke 1:27), and while conceiving and bearing Him: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (Matthew 1:23).  In conceiving Christ, Mary became the ark of the New Covenant [just an illogical assertion from a priori bias].  Were Joseph to touch the ark (Mary) in an unpriestly manner, he would have met the fate of Uzzah, who died touching the sacred vessel (2 Samuel 6:1-8). Mary's body was more sacred than the Old Testament ark [Really? where does Scripture say that?].  “the LORD, the God of Israel, has entered by [the gate of Mary's womb]; therefore it shall remain shut” (Ezekiel 44:2, comment added).

As Adam named Eve woman when she was a sinless virgin (Genesis 2:23), so the New Adam named Mary woman (John 2:4; 19:26), indicating that she was still a sinless virgin at this point.  Love notices these details! [talk about eisegesis!]

 More likely, Marian cult followers make up these details!  How in the world do they get that stuff out of these passages?  They make it up out of their little pink heads!

For the assumption of Mary, they claim that she is already seen in heaven in Rev. 11:19-12:17, and the fact that in 2 Maccabees 2:1-8 the O.T. ark "was removed, never to be found...so Mary's body was assumed into heaven never more to be found on earth." ....

        

David's rejoicing in bringing the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:15) prefigured our Lord's joy in bringing Mary's body into the heavenly Jerusalem.

The last one I'll give you (I don't want you to die laughing from all this nonsense) is this one:

To understand Mary's queenship, I suggest reading 1 Kings 1-2. There, Solomon enthroned his mother, Bathsheba, as Israel's queen-mother, gebirah.  He promised her, “Make your request, my mother; for I will not refuse you” (1 Kings 2:20).  This figure is fulfilled when the new Eve is enthroned in heaven, crowned as the queen-mother of the new people of God (Revelation 12:1,17).

A BIG problem is how they interpret Revelation - in a very bizarre fashion!  The convoluted way in which Song of Solomon is used to prove her virginity and how other scriptures are used to prove her immaculate conception, co-redemption and co-mediatorship, have much in common with the twisting of Scripture by JWs and Mormons.